


Similitude

by karasunovolleygays



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Not Timeskip Compliant, Suicidal Ideation, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25457506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karasunovolleygays/pseuds/karasunovolleygays
Summary: Hajime comes to visit after graduation and Yuutarou isn't there. When he finds out where Yuutarou is instead of practice, Hajime can't run fast enough to outrace the flood of panic the name of the place brings.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Kindaichi Yuutarou
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	Similitude

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with the heavy theme of suicidal thoughts. While suicidal ideation varies from fleeting thoughts to intricate planning for execution, it's alarming to think about and to take in. Please read with caution if you're sensitive to this theme.
> 
> This work is based on the dialogue prompt: "You could have died."

Hajime’s heart pounds in his chest as he sprints across the Aobajousai school grounds. He’s not a student there anymore, but a visit to catch up with the new crop of players after his graduation had landed him in this unique position of nerves and terror.

People are staring at him and he couldn’t care less. Nothing matters except his destination and the person on the end of it.

Despite his own peak physical condition, Hajime’s thighs burn from the effort of sprinting half a kilometer in street clothes while side-stepping anyone who doesn’t get out of his way. He doesn’t think about that, though. He needs to be somewhere and he’ll be damned if a little bit of pain is going to keep him away. 

He barrels through a nearby park, dodging mothers with strollers and people on bikes. They’re probably calling out their displeasure at being disturbed, but Hajime is already too far away to hear it.

What he’s looking for is just ahead, and who he’s looking for is exactly where Kunimi had said he would be. Sitting on a felled log straddling a rushing canal is Yuutarou in his school uniform, feet swinging back and forth just enough to brush the surface of the water.

“Oh, thank god,” Hajime croaks to himself as he winds down to a jog. His legs shiver beneath him from the strain, but he bullies them into submission and carefully creeps out onto the log until he sits next to Yuutarou. Hajime’s legs aren’t long enough to touch the water, but he mirrors the rhythmic swing of feet nonetheless.

They don’t look at each other. Yuutarou probably can’t because he’s just like that and Hajime can’t stand the idea that Yuutarou is here and not at volleyball practice. 

No matter how long it’s been since he learned what ‘here’ is, Hajime still can’t squelch the violent churn of his gut when it comes to mind.

In the fifteen year history of Aobajousai High School, seven students have taken their own lives. Of those seven, four had jumped from this very log into the brisk current of the waterway.

According to Kunimi, who knows Yuutarou best by far, he comes to this spot to ‘think’ sometimes. Kunimi’s general lack of concern about it makes Hajime think he isn’t aware of the history of this old log, which has crossed this canal for as long as Hajime can remember. 

Hajime only knows because the last person to step off of it had been in his class in first year. 

Nobody talks about it, so he isn’t surprised Kunimi doesn’t know. He wishes he himself didn’t know, and he’d wipe that memory out of Yuutarou’s head too if he could.

Yuutarou doesn’t mention Hajime’s exhausted panting, instead gazing down into the glittering ripples of water, too dark beneath the surface to see the bottom this time of year. However, Hajime doesn’t need to see the bottom to remember what it looks like.

He remembers all too clearly in the weeks after his classmate, a mousy kid named Shuusuke, had died here, Hajime had come by to stare at the water. He wanted, no  _ needed, _ to understand what it is about his place that seems to hold answers for impossible questions. 

In those days, he memorized every stone, every protruding tree branch that snaked its way out to cast a pall over this patch of the canal. He still can’t so much as figure out the questions, let alone the answers.

At last, Yuutarou breaks the silence. “Hey, Iwaizumi-san.”

“Hey, Yuutarou.” Hajime lolls his head back and takes a deep breath, wondering when Yuutarou had stopped thinking of him as Hajime and reverted to the role of kouhai.

He doesn’t ask.

“I came by for a visit, but you were gone. Kunimi said you’d be here. I just wanted to check up on you.” 

“Yeah, sorry.” Yuutarou strays a brief glance at Hajime before fixing his gaze back on the water. “I just needed to clear my head a little.”

Hajime nods. “Yeah, I get that. High school is so fucking stressful. Everyone expects so much out of you and you’re not even old enough to buy porn.” Both of them blush at that. “Well, you know what I mean.”

Yuutarou sighs. “Yeah, I do. That’s part of it, but sometimes, it’s other things.”

He holds his breath before he says, “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Shaking his head, Yuutarou’s broadening shoulders sag. “Sort of, but not really. I just don’t know how to say the things in my head so they’ll make sense to a normal person.”

“Nah, fuck that,” Iwaizumi spits. “You don’t have to change the way you think. Just say what you feel. I’ll figure it out.”

A smile threatens the corners of Yuutarou’s mouth. “Yeah you always were good at that. Just give me a minute to get my shit together.” Yuutarou gets his minute, and Hajime holds his breath when the words come pouring out.

“My mom’s birthday was yesterday,” Yuutarou murmurs. “She turned forty.”

“Yeah, I remember your mom being younger than mine.” 

“By a lot, but she still isn’t young anymore.” A ragged sniffle shudders out of Yuutarou, and Hajime bites back the urge to hug him and never let him go again.

The pained confession forges on. “She hasn’t been on a date in five years. She can’t, because she works three jobs just to send me to school. When she does get time off, her back hurts or she’s just too tired to do anything but exist. I try to do whatever I can to lighten the load for her, but every day, she gets more and more worn down, and I hate it.” 

Tears start to trickle down Yuutarou’s cheeks, and Hajime can feel his own eyes itching from some of his own. “She does it because she loves you.” Hajime thinks about his own mother, who works overtime at the hospital whenever they offer it so he and his brother can do things like play sports and just be teenagers.

“I know, but —” Yuutarou drags the sleeve of his blazer across his face to soak up the mess, just for more to fall into its place. “Damn it.”

Hajime digs deep into a dark place that time had buried since first year, thoughts painted by the very same water beneath their feet. “And sometimes, you think she’d be better off without you, right?”

“Yeah.” 

The word is brief but heavy with the weight of a thousand guilty thoughts Hajime has battled in his own psyche before. He isn’t sure if he would have truly gone through with it, but there had been a few glimpses of clarity in the bottom of that canal. 

That feeling has always evaporated almost as quickly as it came, but Yuutarou, an only child, isn’t as lucky as Hajime to have a sibling at home to chase those thoughts away with. Instead, he gets to sit there and stew over how much better his mother’s life might be if it didn’t revolve around him.

Only once had Hajime put words to this feeling, a weekend sleepover at Tooru’s place while his brother was sick. Tooru had slapped him when he said it, then hugged him with his freakishly strong grip. “You don’t get to make that choice for her, Iwabaka!” 

Hajime had apologized and never brought it up again because he understood. Every school, every class has that handful of kids whose parents obviously aren’t as involved: homework doesn’t get done, never has a lunch, wears old or dirty clothes. 

If Hajime’s mother didn’t want to provide for him the best she could, she wouldn’t have. He’s seen the results of that, and he has never had to struggle with those. Judging by the innate goodness in Yuutarou, he can’t imagine Mrs. Kindaichi is any different.

Hajime wraps his arms around Yuutarou’s bicep, a little stouter than it had been the previous year, and rests a cheek on his shoulder. “Trust me when I say she works so hard because she loves you. Not because she has to, but because she can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“But I —” Yuutarou’s voice cracks. 

“But nothing.” He frames Yuutarou’s face in his hands and stares him down. “I used to think that too, but someone set me straight and now I’m gonna set you straight.”

Yuutarou gasps softly in Hajime’s grip. “Hajime, I —”

“Just listen to me, all right?” Hajime swallows hard past the knot of pure ache in his throat. “When Kunimi said you were here and I thought you could have . . . you could’ve died, I wanted to throw up but I couldn’t because I had to find you.

“Your mom has been with you through everything. If I felt like  _ that, _ how do you think she would feel if you were gone?”

Their eyes meet, and neither of them speak, but Hajime can see his words soaking into Yuutarou’s brain. His face rumples and he holds onto Hajime. 

Hajime rubs Yuutarou’s shaking shoulders and blinks back tears of his own. “You’re okay, Yuu. Everything’s all right.” 

They linger like this for what seems like forever before Yuutarou unfurls himself from Hajime’s embrace. He sponges the tears and snot from his face with his jacket sleeve, leaving angry red skin in its wake, but Hajime can’t think of anything more beautiful than the wobbling smile on Yuutarou’s lips.

“I hope we understand each other on this,” Hajime rasps, voice thick with a clot of emotion. 

Yuutarou nods, and they go back to sitting side by side and staring at the water. It isn’t as deep as it had looked just minutes ago, and the slivers of golden sunlight sparkling in the stream dull as he watches.

A hand slides over Hajime’s and gives it a squeeze. “I’m going to talk to Akira. It doesn’t feel right with him not knowing I’m, you know . . . like this sometimes.”

“Good.” Hajime turns over his hand and threads his fingers with Yuutarou’s. It slaps him back to his last day in high school, pulling Yuutarou to the side and telling him about his plans for college, and that their more-than-friends relationship would have to come to an end. Both of them shed tears but parted with smiles.

But the way Yuutarou’s thumb idly strokes the side of his hand pushes that parting onto a back burner, like they had never left one another behind.

“If you ever need to talk about things, no matter where I am, what time it is, you call me, okay?”

“Yeah.” 

When Yuutarou looks over at Hajime, their faces are so close their noses are almost touching. Which of them leans in first, he doesn’t know, but the feeling of their lips touching is the most natural thing in the world for Hajime.

The two of them help each other up, and their hands don’t leave one another while they carefully leave their spot on the log, nor do they part when the two of them head back to Aobajousai High School in no particular hurry. 


End file.
